To focus on growing your business and keeping stress at bay before the tax season approaches, make it a habit to keep your books updated throughout the year. If you are struggling with the messes of your business, we advise you to take some time off to clean up your books so your outsourced accounting firm can help you make better financial decisions in your new fiscal year.
How to Clean up Your Books
It doesn’t matter anymore how to clean up your books. The complex task is in your hands. Here are four simple steps to help you circumvent the worst-case scenario.
Find the Problems and Consider It Serious
When you have messy books, you will start noticing account discrepancies. You will hit a dead end when you try to make sense of the disagreement, eventually forcing you to analyze all the records from the beginning of the financial year. You may also notice an overestimation of your assets, an increase in your business expenses, and your retained earnings missing. Realize that the issues that you find out are serious, resulting in audits and poor business decisions.
After your assessment is complete, work on the issues one by one and try not to procrastinate much. Whatever you solve will help you quickly catch sight of similar issues in the future, if any occur.
Follow the Process Religiously
Maybe you found out your books are disordered during a critical financial situation. Or the pressure of filing for a tax return forced you to organize your books. No matter what the reason is, stick to the process firmly. Record every financial transaction immediately or set aside a particular time every day or every week to update your books. Small business owners who usually handle multiple responsibilities often find themselves procrastinating bookkeeping since they are short of time or don’t find it an important part of running a business.
Do not wait until the worst-case scenario has happened to update your books and keep them neat. Having neat books will help you in finding a solution to your financial problems in times of adversity.
Consider Using a Cloud Platform
According to Forbes, cloud accounting reduces the cost of labor by 50%. If you are still storing your financial documents in an office drawer, you’ve added one more reason for inaccuracies to creep into your books. Having a cloud-based accounting system where you can store everything from invoices to business loan papers will make it easier for you to access them anytime you need.
Such software will have templates that let you examine the current financial situation of your business, analyze your assets, profits, and losses, and help you keep track of invoices that need to be sent out or received.
Consult a Professional Bookkeeper and Follow the Instructions
If you don’t have the skills to solve accounting problems, that’s completely alright. You don’t need to be a specialist in every field to run a business. Search the internet and find a professional bookkeeper, and since they are experts in this job, they will be able to sort out your issues in a matter of time. Opting for remote bookkeeping services is equally effective if you don’t have any professional bookkeepers near you. Nowadays, remote bookkeepers also offer a cloud platform where all finance-related documents of your business are stored, making it easy for you to access them whenever you want.
If you came across this bookkeeping clean-up checklist, you likely faced an unprecedented financial situation and realized that it is time to clean up your books. Consider these suggestions to improve the performance of your business immensely since organized, updated books always help in making informed decisions.
Find a firm that offers QuickBooks bookkeeping regardless of the current condition of your books. You just have to send them the financial statements they ask for, and they will help you organize everything perfectly and even provide you guidance to avoid such undesirable situations in the future.